#11: Dropshipping as a side hustle can make $5000/year in revenue

There are many reasons why people start a side hustle. For majority is it to earn extra money, but along the journey they always find their way to a passion project. Our hustler today started with a goal to earn some money, but after hustling for about four years, he has been able to start his own business at the age of 20!

🤑Built a dropshipping business of ~$10000 in revenue

🤩Founded a marketing agency before turning 20 years old

🤯Led the agency to revenue of ~$150K ARR in 6 months

Dropshipping as a side hustle can make $5000/year in revenue

Keith Salins is the founder of Crowwd, a Web3 community marketing agency. He started hustling as early as 11th grade and became a founder before age 20. He has had successes and failures in the journey. But he was always focused on building and experimenting.

The curiosity that led to a Dropshipping hustle

It was 2019, and Keith had just graduated from 10th grade and had a very conventional path ahead of him. But he wanted to explore something else. One day while scrolling through Instagram, he came across a business model called dropshipping.

In 2019, dropshipping was the talk of the town in the US. With E-commerce penetrating a vast market, there was a new way of making money.

So what is dropshipping?

“Dropshipping is a retail fulfilment method where a store doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, it purchases the item from a third party and has it shipped directly to the customer. As a result, the seller doesn’t have to handle the product directly.”

Keith decided to drop ship for the US. He did some research and narrowed it down to the fitness equipment niche from Alibaba. To get customers, he started advertising. He realized that to get any results in the US, the ad spending has to be much larger. He invested around $100 with no sales.

Dropshipping was also picking some steam in India, so he experimented with the Indian market.

And voila!

Even a $5 ad spend led to sales of $50, a straightforward 10X ROI.

Scaling Dropshipping to ~$10000 revenue business

In dropshipping, while you don’t have to worry about the logistics and inventory of the product, you still need to find reliable fulfilment partners. Keith found his partner in Shop101.

Shop101 handled not only the logistics but gave him the tools to set up a website and payment gateway. His sole focus was on running ads and generating sales. He started with fitness equipment and soon realized that virality & hype drive most sales.

He started selling products based on trends. Special days like Valentines and Diwali had the most impact. He would start selling products for these events two weeks prior. Discovering trends and running the ads was enjoyable experience for Keith. He also experimented with influencer marketing on niche Instagram pages, and found out it was giving better results than paid ads.

Soon, he found a playbook for dropshipping. From logistics to customer acquisition, he had figured out what worked. But even with sales and good ROI, he started losing interest as the tasks had become monotonous. His 12th-grade finals were also approaching, and he wanted to be more serious with his studies.

After two years and generating ~$10000 in revenue (25-30% profit), he decided to shut shop on dropshipping.

Failures & Experimentations led to him starting an agency

Keith started feeling bored with dropshipping and began to experiment with products. The first product was a QR-based menu for restaurants. Around July 2021, the COVID lockdown restriction was lifted, and QR menus were in demand. He built an MVP with no code and got five restaurants to sign up for a month’s trial. While the feedback was good, a lockdown was imposed again, and he could not get any paying subscription.

He abandoned the idea and went on to join a college social app startup as the first marketing hire. During this time he was in his first year of college. In about six months, he decided to leave the startup to explore new opportunities. At this time, he started to get active on Twitter. He got a freelance opportunity to write content for an Indiehacker product.

Towards the end of 2021, Web3 was witnessing a boom, and Keith had worked on a few NFT projects by then. As his freelance work was slowing down, he decided to look for some opportunities in Web3 companies. He knew a friend working for a Web3 company and reached out to him for an opportunity. It was fate; the company was looking for a community manager. He started working with Layer3 for $1500/month as a community manager. This opportunity opened many doors for him.

In about nine months, he understood that Web3 marketing required a firm hold on content & community. And with his experience with Layer3, he decided to start a Web3 marketing agency called Crowwd. Layer3 became his first client, and now six months later, his firm boosts of clients like Pillow, Devfolio, Coinbooks, and EthIndia, among others. Today, as a team of 3 Crowwd generates an ARR ~$150K.

Hustlers Insights of the Week

Keith’s journey is a great testament to the opportunities one can unlock from side hustles. All you have to do is start somewhere and keep exploring your interests.

Focus on a niche: For any side hustle you start, you should find a niche audience. It helps you to get the best ROI. Be it dropshipping or freelancing or starting his own agency, Keith always found a niche that he could serve the best.

Keep a close eye on trends: The market and consumers are always changing. Knowing the current and emerging trends helps you to change your strategies and keep attracting your users. Keith could sustain a dropshipping business because he could spot trends easily and

Be open to opportunities: Side hustles are meant to give you free rein to experiment. So experiment and be open to opportunities. You can start with dropshipping and then move on to freelancing and eventually become a founder like Keith.

Did you learn something new about side hustles reading this? If yes, share it with a friend to increase the surface area of knowledge so that more people can know how to make money.

Also, know anyone (who is making money from their side hustle while having a full-time job) we should feature? Let us know by replying, and we will get chatting!

Want to get started with your side hustle? Check out our initiatives.

Build: A 4 weeks cohort to build and launch a side project.

BuildOnChain: Learn, build & launch a Web3 side hustle in 5 Weeks

BuildCamp Goa: Build a side project while vacationing with like-minded individuals and seasoned hustlers.